VA - Audio Alchemy (Experiments In Beat Reconstruction)

Alchemy is the transformation of base metals into gold. The Audio Alchemy compilation from the San Francisco-based record label, Ubiquity Records, earns the metaphoric title. While many albums featuring various artists rarely overcome the rigidity of their own immured context, Audio Alchemy taps into a raw musical style, more egotistically ambiguous and instrumentally intelligent than many of its peers. Each of the tracks is individually produced, which makes the album's flow considerably more praise-worthy. Following intro-lude, Cut Chemist delivers "Layered Laird," a brilliant seven-minute opener of vaporous, down tempo acid jazz. The song throbs with steady upright bass, ride cymbals, and sitars serving as the perfect preamble to the igneous intensity of "Filed Under X" by Bugs, San Francisco's versatile electronica duo. Bugs' offering to Audio Alchemy exhibits mastery of the crescendo, while the song slithers sinuously along the aural landscape until it strikes the eardrum. So impressive is the serpentine track that it attracted the attention of hip-hop producers RZA and Prince Paul, who sampled the beat on Wu-Tang's The W and Handsome Boy Modeling School, respectively. Underground producer T-Cisco uproots Pink Floyd's The Wall and sprouts "Gritos," a mellow odyssey into the sonic space of solitude. The song patiently lays wah-wah guitar strums over a funky beat of jazz and world percussion without overcrowding the long lasting measure. The soft edges of the beats and changes create an electronic rhythmic orbit around the listener's heart and all pulse in harmony. As an album, Audio Alchemy graciously rebuts the criticisms of electronic musicianship with a warmth, coherence, and thematic ambience unprecedented in the trip-hop genre. -- Kevin Burke